Presuppositional apologetics

[Greektim]

Since Evangelist6589 likes to keep talking about apologetics, I was wondering how people felt about this method. You should check it out, Evan. Here is a street level version from Sye Ten Bruggencate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1AWO92Crc

Here is theopedia's take on it.

FWIW, I recently read Van Til's Defense of the Faith and wrote a review of it here. He is the father of this approach. He argues that it is the only consistent approach to reformed theology. So all you calvies out there need to check it out.

 

[evangelist6589]

Since Evangelist6589 likes to keep talking about apologetics, I was wondering how people felt about this method. You should check it out, Evan. Here is a street level version from Sye Ten Bruggencate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1AWO92Crc

Here is theopedia's take on it.

FWIW, I recently read Van Til's Defense of the Faith and wrote a review of it here. He is the father of this approach. He argues that it is the only consistent approach to reformed theology. So all you calvies out there need to check it out.

That is my method of apologetics in general. However I have learned some from Geisler, Ravi, McDowell, RC Sproul, and the Truth Project. I am also familiar with Van Til's and that book as it was in the Bob Jones bookstore when I was in seminary. We talked of Van Til in systematic theology or another class can't remember. Hey GreekTim I have the book five views on apologetics and Frame wrote the defense of this method. Have you read this book? I will watch your video.

 

[Greektim]

That is my method of apologetics in general. However I have learned some from Geisler, Ravi, McDowell, RC Sproul, and the Truth Project. I am also familiar with Van Til's and that book as it was in the Bob Jones bookstore when I was in seminary. We talked of Van Til in systematic theology or another class can't remember. Hey GreekTim I have the book five views on apologetics and Frame wrote the defense of this method. Have you read this book? I will watch your video.

I'm just at the beginning of studying the presupp approach. Bahnsen's debate w/ Stein was a good listen (check it out on youtube). I need to read more. But in my circuit of reading, I'm in theological method not apologetics. So I may come back to it in a bit.

 

[evangelist6589]

I'm just at the beginning of studying the presupp approach. Bahnsen's debate w/ Stein was a good listen (check it out on youtube). I need to read more. But in my circuit of reading, I'm in theological method not apologetics. So I may come back to it in a bit.

The truth I have not read the book that I have Five Views on Apologetics but I plan too soon. Presently am reading the following books.

The Gospel According to Jesus
Strange Fire
Agents of the Apocalypse
The exemplary Husband
Defending Inerrancy

I have a TON of books I want to read and I am gonna get back to my reading after this post.

 

[quantumfaith]

Does this view of apologetics fall into an informal fallacy (begging the question)? Presupposing a christian worldview to prove a christian worlview?

But then again, doesn't most reason within the realm of the metaphysical fall into this?

Lost in the weeds a bit here.....but it does seem like a worthy criticism.

 

[Reformed]

Since Evangelist6589 likes to keep talking about apologetics, I was wondering how people felt about this method. You should check it out, Evan. Here is a street level version from Sye Ten Bruggencate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1AWO92Crc

Here is theopedia's take on it.

FWIW, I recently read Van Til's Defense of the Faith and wrote a review of it here. He is the father of this approach. He argues that it is the only consistent approach to reformed theology. So all you calvies out there need to check it out.

I studied Van Til's presuppositional approach a number of years ago, and I agree with it.

 

[Reformed]

Does this view of apologetics fall into an informal fallacy (begging the question)? Presupposing a christian worldview to prove a christian worlview?

Not quite. The Christian worldview is derived from a Jewish covenantal worldview. The Christian worldview did not start with new truth, but rather old truth with further revelation (The New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is the New revealed).

 

[quantumfaith]

Not quite. The Christian worldview is derived from a Jewish covenantal worldview. The Christian worldview did not start with new truth, but rather old truth with further revelation (The New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is the New revealed).

OK, simply for the purpose of "sharpening"....change "christian worldview" to "theistic worldview".

Is your thought still the same?

Reductionism

 

[Reformed]

OK, simply for the purpose of "sharpening"....change "christian worldview" to "theistic worldview".

Is your thought still the same?

Reductionism

It is...because of my presupposition.

 

[OldRegular]

Since Evangelist6589 likes to keep talking about apologetics, I was wondering how people felt about this method. You should check it out, Evan. Here is a street level version from Sye Ten Bruggencate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1AWO92Crc

Here is theopedia's take on it.

FWIW, I recently read Van Til's Defense of the Faith and wrote a review of it here. He is the father of this approach. He argues that it is the only consistent approach to reformed theology. So all you calvies out there need to check it out.

Found this reading about Van Til. Sounds screwy to me!

But is Van Til really orthodox in this area of Christian theism? What about, for instance, his doctrine of the Trinity? Van Til believed that God is at the same time both one person and three persons. As Frame says: “For Van Til, God is not simply a unity of persons; he is a person” (65, italics his). This, to be sure, is not the teaching of orthodox Christianity, which maintains that God is one in essence (or substance) and three in persons. As the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.” -

See more at: http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=167#sthash.N0LaNDsh.dpuf

 

[quantumfaith]

It is...because of my presupposition.

Great (clever) answer.

 

[quantumfaith]

Found this reading about Van Til. Sounds screwy to me!

That sounds "screwy" to you?? Honestly?

 

[Greektim]

Found this reading about Van Til. Sounds screwy to me!

Well... VT certainly leaned heavily on the ontological trinity rather than the economical trinity. I think his language on matters gets confusing, especially when you realize that English is not his first. He has to clarify himself often b/c how he uses a word can be held to mean various things. But I didn't read anything un-Trinitarian. And he taught at Westminster, so I don't think he could make it there being un-Trinitarian.

And that review of Frame's assessment of VT does what so many people do... misunderstand and misappropriate VT's view. For instance, the analogical knowledge paragraphs are demonstration that he has not grasped what Frame was saying about VT. Believers and non-believers can know something to be true. It is only that the believers can account for their knowledge. The un-believer is borrowing from our presupposition when they know anything. This is their sensus divinitatis at work. Thus their knowledge is an analogical knowledge.

 

[OldRegular]

I have a vague recollection of reading some years back that Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til were at great odds over the question of apologetics. Yet I read in the following:

Clark’s presuppositionalism could be called dogmatic presuppositionalism, 1 whereas Van Til utilized what could be called transcendental presuppositionalism. 2 Still, their thought systems had much in common.

http://instituteofbiblicaldefense.com/1997/05/cornelius-van-til/

Turns out my memory was correct:

Within eight years of the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), two friends who would prove to be the most important orthodox Reformed apologists of the 20th Century—Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark—became embroiled in a controversy.[1] The debate centered on the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God—specifically, the relationship between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge. This paper will argue that the controversy was necessary because Clark’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God—when taken to its consistent end—led him to deny the Christology of the Reformed Faith.

This thesis will be proven by presenting the history of the controversy, the differences between Van Til’s and Clark’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God, and where their doctrines lead when taken to their consistent ends. Two newspapers—The Presbyterian Guardian and the Standard Bearer—and their reprints of important documents involved in the controversy will be used to present the history. Finally, the Christology expressed in the Chalcedonian Creed and the Westminster Confession will be compared and contrasted with the Christologies of Clark and Van Til using primary sources.[2]

http://sbcvoices.com/the-gordon-clark-and-cornelius-van-til-controversy/

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I skimmed the article hurriedly and it appears that a lot of politics were involved. Gordon Clark apparently believed the following about the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man:

Clark believed that man’s knowledge and God’s knowledge are quantitatively different but not qualitatively different.[177] Instead of a two-fold theory of truth, he believed that truth is one.[178] If man knows an item of truth, and both God and man know the identical item, then on this item God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge coincide.[179] Yet, man can never know exhaustively and completely God’s knowledge of any truth in all its relationships and implications because man is not omniscient.[180] Every truth has an infinite number of relationships and implications and these implications in turn have other infinite implications.[181] Thus, man’s knowledge will forever remain quantitatively less than God’s knowledge, even in Heaven.[182]

http://sbcvoices.com/the-gordon-clark-and-cornelius-van-til-controversy/

It seems to me that the the logical end of Clark's reasoning is a god much like the Greco-Roman gods, a super human! And then there is Clarks assertion that God is "logic"!

It is to be hoped that these remarks on the relation between God and truth will be seen as pertinent to the discussion of logic. In any case, the subject of logic can be more clearly introduced by one more Scriptural reference. The well-known prologue to John’s Gospel may be paraphrased, “In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was with God, and Logic was God.... In logic was life and the life was the light of men.”

This paraphrase-in fact, this translation-may not only sound strange to devout ears, it may even sound obnoxious and offensive.

http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=16

And it does.

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Whereas Van Til held the following view about the knowledge of God:

Van Til, on the other hand, believed that there is a Creator/creature distinction between God and man that makes God quantitatively and qualitatively incomprehensible to man.
http://sbcvoices.com/the-gordon-clark-and-cornelius-van-til-controversy/

Scripture tells us:

Isaiah 40:28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

Therefore, Van Til is correct about the nature, the incomprehensibility of God, regardless of, what seems to me, his screwy views on the Triune Nature of God.

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Notwithstanding all the above, I am not a student of apologetics so the presuppositional apologetics of either Van Til or Clark mean little to me!

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[OldRegular]

Does this view of apologetics fall into an informal fallacy (begging the question)? Presupposing a christian worldview to prove a christian worlview?

But then again, doesn't most reason within the realm of the metaphysical fall into this?

Lost in the weeds a bit here.....but it does seem like a worthy criticism.

Reminds me of some of the "proofs" of theorems in partial differential equations. You started out at a certain place, chased your tail in a certain direction, and if you wound up where you started the theorem was proven!:thumbs:

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[quantumfaith]

Reminds me of some of the "proofs" of theorems in partial differential equations. You started out at a certain place, chased your tail in a certain direction, and if you wound up where you started the theorem was proven!:thumbs:

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Proofs by induction.....always challenging to me. I think I would have been a much better engineer or applied mathematician.....had I taken that road. Theoretical mathematics is just not in my DNA. Although I can often follow the work of others....being original just not a talent I am gifted with.

You should try (if you haven't) proofs in Modern Algebra and or Non-Euclidean Geometries, Topology.....ugh.

 

[Yeshua1]

I have a vague recollection of reading some years back that Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til were at great odds over the question of apologetics. Yet I read in the following:



Turns out my memory was correct:



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I skimmed the article hurriedly and it appears that a lot of politics were involved. Gordon Clark apparently believed the following about the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man:



It seems to me that the the logical end of Clark's reasoning is a god much like the Greco-Roman gods, a super human! And then there is Clarks assertion that God is "logic"!


And it does.

******************************************************************

Whereas Van Til held the following view about the knowledge of God:



Scripture tells us:

Isaiah 40:28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

Therefore, Van Til is correct about the nature, the incomprehensibility of God, regardless of, what seems to me, his screwy views on the Triune Nature of God.

******************************************************************
Notwithstanding all the above, I am not a student of apologetics so the presuppositional apologetics of either Van Til or Clark mean little to me!

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Sinners/natural people though cannot "know" anything that is of a real spiritual nature, as to have that knowledge requires one to have the Holy Spirit now residing in you, and bringing illumination unto you...

So this goes back to the truth then that one is never argued into the Kingdom, but that the Lord honors his word to bring that sinner in!

 

[Greektim]

Sinners/natural people though cannot "know" anything that is of a real spiritual nature, as to have that knowledge requires one to have the Holy Spirit now residing in you, and bringing illumination unto you...

So this goes back to the truth then that one is never argued into the Kingdom, but that the Lord honors his word to bring that sinner in!

This isn't really what is at stake in terms of knowledge in this debate.

 

[Yeshua1]

This isn't really what is at stake in terms of knowledge in this debate.

We are agreeing here then that both saved and lost have the same capacity for knowing and having knowledge, as long as its not spiritual in nature?

 

[OldRegular]

Proofs by induction.....always challenging to me. I think I would have been a much better engineer or applied mathematician.....had I taken that road. Theoretical mathematics is just not in my DNA. Although I can often follow the work of others....being original just not a talent I am gifted with.

You should try (if you haven't) proofs in Modern Algebra and or Non-Euclidean Geometries, Topology.....ugh.

My problem was in convincing myself I had proven anything. Never could!

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